From ‘Never Again’ to ‘Never Mind’

White House press secretary Josh Earnest was recently asked why the Obama administration refuses to call the Islamic State’s (ISIS) brutal assault on Christians “Christian genocide.” His response speaks volumes. “Legal ramifications,” he blandly and bloodlessly answered, assuring us “there are lawyers that are considering whether or not that term can be properly applied.”

These pathetic, cold and empty words are especially jarring coming from the Obama White House. After all, it was President Obama who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for “his diplomacy…founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.” It was President Obama who declared, “Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.” It was President Obama who lectured us in 2012, “Too often, the world has failed to prevent the killing of innocents on a massive scale…‘Never again’ is a challenge to defend the fundamental right of free people and free nations to exist in peace and security…‘Never again’ is a challenge to nations.”

Rampage

It pays to recall that “Never again” is what the world said after Hitler and his death cult tried to erase Europe’s entire Jewish population. In response, the United Nations in 1948 declared as genocide “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group”: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of one group to another group.

Much of what ISIS has done in its rampage through Syria and Iraq is too gruesome to describe in this venue. But here’s the R-rated version (one strains to find the words to sufficiently soften it to PG-13). You be the judge of whether it amounts to genocide or attempted genocide:

The European Union reports that Christians and Yazidis (a Kurdish religious tradition that blends elements of Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam) “have been killed, slaughtered, beaten, subjected to extortion, abducted, and tortured” by the Islamic State’s coordinated campaign of butchery and brutality.

ISIS has orchestrated mass-beheadings of Egyptian Christians; razed, desecrated, and plundered ancient Christian churches; shelled Christian homes; targeted Assyrian Christians for abduction; and crucified Christian children as young as 12.

As it carries out what the Hudson Institute’s Nina Shea describes as “religious genocide,” ISIS has given Christians a choice to convert to Islam, make payments to remain Christian, or face execution. In a haunting echo of how the Nazis branded Jews, the ISIS death cult marks Christian-owned properties with the Arabic equivalent of the letter “N,” for “Nazarene.”

ISIS has kidnapped and murdered 1,000 Christians in the Syrian city of Aleppo. The Iraqi city of Mosul has been emptied of Christians.

As proof of its savage piety, ISIS has murdered 5,000 Yazidis; forced 2,000 Yazidi women into marriage and sex slavery; conducted a systematic campaign of rape against Christian and Yazidi women; imprisoned Christian and Yazidi children as young as eight; sold children into slavery; and perhaps most shocking and shameful of all, used “mentally challenged” children as suicide bombers, according to the United Nations.

An estimated 700,000 Syrian Christians have fled the ISIS onslaught and the wider civil war in Syria. On a single night in August 2014, ISIS forced more than 150,000 Iraqi Christians from their homes and into hiding. All told, “More than 1 million Christians have fled the terror of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and the remaining populations are a small remnant (250,000 in Iraq and 200,000 in Syria),” as J. Daniels, an expert in international human rights law, has written in this space.

This list of mega-crimes is at once shocking yet unsurprising. After all, ISIS leaders have openly declared, “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women.” ISIS materials call for “jihad against the Jews, the Christians, the Rafida [Shiite Muslims], and the proponents of democracy.” The Islamic State’s founding father, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been clear from the beginning that he is at war with civilization, with anything or anyone that refuses to submit, with the very notion of free will.

Like America’s World War II foes, he delights in war. “Soldiers of the Islamic State,” he howls, “erupt volcanoes of jihad everywhere. Light the earth with fire.” Like America’s Cold War enemy, he hates freedom and wants to upend the liberal global order. “Let the world know that we are living today in a new era”—an era that will “trample the idol of nationalism, destroy the idol of democracy.” And like his forefather Osama bin Laden, terror is his weapon of choice. “Terrorism is to refuse humiliation, subjugation and subordination… Terrify the enemies of Allah and seek death.”

According to The New York Times, ISIS has “manufactured rudimentary chemical warfare shells” and is aggressively pursuing a chemical-weapons capability.

In control of 26,000 square-miles of Iraq and Syria, ISIS is threatening U.S. strategic allies and treaty allies in Turkey, Jordan, Israel, and Saudi Arabia; using its Iraq-Syria beachhead to spread into Europe, Africa, and Afghanistan; and attracting footsoldiers to its cause. In fact, the number of foreigner fighters aligned with ISIS in Iraq and Syria hasdoubled, with as many as 31,000 people from 86 countries now fighting under the ISIS banner.

Just as ISIS draws fighters to its caliphate, it also inspires, dispatches, directs and commands fighters around the world, including in the U.S. The FBI has 900 ISIS-related investigations underway in all 50 states.

Add it all up, and ISIS is “more powerful now than al Qaeda was on 9/11,” according to Rep. Peter King, chairman of a key House counterterrorism committee. Brett McGurk, the president’s envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition, calls ISIS “worse than al Qaeda.”

Nobel laureate and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel invoked this same line of thinking during a 2012 ceremony at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial. “The greatest tragedy in history could have been prevented had the civilized world spoken up, taken measures in 1939, ‘40, ‘41, ‘42,” he intoned. “So in this place we may ask: Have we learned anything from it?”

As the White House averts its gaze, Pilate-like, from the Islamic State’s assault on civilization, as Washington allows sequestration to shrink the reach, role, and resources of civilization’s first responder and last line of defense, as our politics devolves into a reality-TV circus, as the American people focus on their hand-held devices, the answer is obvious. No one dares utter those words “Never again” nowadays. Sadly, as a hemorrhaging world staggers to the end of the Obama era, “Never mind” is more apt.

Fairytales don’t tell children that dragons exist; children already know that dragons exist. Fairytales tell children that dragons can be killed. - G.K. Chesterton

Find the courage to proclaim Christ, … and the unchanging truths which have their foundation in Him. These are the truths that set us free! They are the truths which alone can guarantee respect for the inalienable dignity and rights of each man, woman and child in our world – including the most defenseless of all human beings, the unborn child in the mother’s womb. - Pope Benedict XVI

God does not choose the qualified. He qualifies the chosen - Madre Teresa de Calcutá

God gave us ten commandments, not ten thousand. Why? Why not a more complete list of specifics? Because he wanted freedom and variety. Why do you think he created so many persons? Why not just one? Because he loves different personalities. He wants his chorus to sing in harmony, but not in unison - Peter Kreeft

How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints. - C.S Lewis

I would like to remind everyone, especially everyone engaged in boosting the world’s economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity - Papa Bento XVI

If medieval people talked less about their own dignity, it is because they were more concerned about God´s dignity; if modern people talk more about it, it is because they are more concerned with themselves - Edward Feser

If you find a perfect parish, you go ahead and join her, it won't be perfect anymore - Matthew Kelly

In fact, a fine distinction could be a flat contradiction - G.K.Chesterton

It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile. G. K. Chesterton

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith - Alexis de Tocqueville

Mittite in Dexteram Navigii Rete, et Invenietis (João 21,6)

Multiculturalism is the doctrine which says that no culture can ever claim precedence over any other. So there can be no hierarchy of values, and no society can uphold its historic traditions and values against any challenge - Melaine Phillips

Napoleon himself announced to the Pope Pius VII that he was going to destroy the Church, to which Pius VII responded, “Oh my little man, you think you’re going to succeed in accomplishing what centuries of priests and bishops have tried and failed to do!”

Nowadays the devil has made such a mess of everything in the system of life on earth that the world will presently become uninhabitable for anybody but Saints. - Jacques Maritain

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience - Clive.S. Lewis

One was the view that stars are personal beings, governing our lives (astrology); the other the general theory that men have one mind between them (marxism); a view obviously opposed to immortality; that is, to individuality - G.K Chesteron

The difficulty of explaining “why I am Catholic” is that there are 10,000 reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true. - GK Chesterton

The divide in Western civilization isn't between rich and poor, red vs. blue, or the uneducated vs. the educated. It's God. God is the dividing line. You either believe God loves each of us and grants us inalienable rights or you believe that everything is negotiable including life - Matthew Archbold

The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world! - Diane M. Korzeniewski

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him - Chesterton

The two most destructive heresies — and the two most popular — are angelism, confusing man with an angel by denying his likeness to animals, and animalism, confusing man with an animal by denying his likeness to angels - Peter Kreeft

The whole of history is a struggle between two loves: love of oneself to contempt of God; love of God to contempt of self, in martyrdom. We are in this struggle.

There are only three kinds of people: those who seek God and have found Him — these are wise and happy; those who seek God and have not yet found Him — these are wise and unhappy; and those who live without either seeking God or finding Him — and these are both unwise and unhappy. - Blaise Pascal

There are two sorts of people who might be tempted to think of death as a friend: those who think the nature of the human person has nothing to do with the body, and those who think it has everything to do with the body; in short, Platonists and materialists - Edward Feser

To avoid therefore the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state - Edmund Burke on French Revolution

To be or not to be – that is the question”, then the massive medieval doctor (St. Thomas) does most certainly reply in voice of thunder, “To be – that is the answer" - Chesterton